Earnings season is upon us. Since most companies report earnings based on a calendar basis, the 4th quarter for a lot of companies ended December 31st. Usually, it takes about 3 weeks for companies to start reporting earnings after the quarter ends. Although we have started to see earnings reports coming out this week, the next 2 weeks are going to have many more earnings announcements come forth. This is a time that we can potentially see some major gaps on a stock’s price after an announcement is made, whether a big pop up or a big plummet down.
For any trade, we should always be aware of when the company will report – especially now since a majority of companies are announcing. Here are 2 sites that can be used for determining when earnings are announced:
http://biz.yahoo.com/research/earncal/today.html
http://www.thestreet.com/event-calendar/index.html
Each will show a calendar of earnings announcements as well as the ability to look up a specific company. Another site where you can look up a specific company is http://finviz.com/ . This site also allows a search of companies announcing earnings at various times through the site’s screener tool.
Sometimes you will get conflicting information from the 3 sites. A company often changes the planned announcement as time gets closer to the specified date. Usually, as the actual date approaches, the sites get updated with the correct information. If a conflict exists, always err to the closest earnings date. Be aware that option prices will typically be more inflated leading up to earnings and then come back to more normal prices after the announcement. This is measured through the implied volatility of an option.
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